CMES Seminar: Gendered Refugee Bodies - A Feminist Analysis of Syrian Refugee Mobility in Turkey and Lebanon

Abstract

How can we understand the complex dynamics of gender and bodily strategies in the context of forced migration beyond the dominant binary attention? Focusing on the experiences of women and gender minorities in Turkey and Lebanon, this talk explores how refugees navigate patriarchal and homophobic landscapes in their first countries of asylum, and how these landscapes impact on their vulnerabilities, choices, and opportunities for secondary mobility. Drawing on original field data collected through interviews with women and the LGBTQI community, it highlights the complex interplay between gender, sexual orientation, class, ethnicity and marital status in shaping vulnerabilities and trajectories in conflict displacement. Furthermore, and more importantly, it identifies gendered bodily strategies - such as unwanted marriages, childbearing, sex work and organ trafficking - that contribute to levels of violence and exclusion from humanitarian protection.

Speaker Bio

Sinem Kavak is a researcher at the Center for Sustainability Studies at Lund University and a research affiliate at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute.  She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science earned at the École Normale Supérieure de Paris Saclay in France.  Her research areas are critical political economy, migration and refugee studies with a focus on labour, gender and class. She has also conducted research on themes in critical agrarian studies and rural/environmental social movements. Geographically, her research focuses on Turkey, Lebanon, and Colombia. 

This seminar is part of the CMES Seminar Series.